


Technically, Missing

by GoldStarGrl



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Angst, Multi, Mystery, Revenge Sex, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-13 10:05:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16015661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl
Summary: Jimmy disappears after Chuck's funeral, leaving Kim with only a series of voicemails and three weeks left before she can drive again. Enter Howard, with two working arms and enough guilt to be her chauffer. Haunted by the McGill brothers, they try to track down Jimmy before he slips through their fingers too.





	1. Chapter 1

Jimmy left her a voicemail. Not a letter.

It was fitting. The man would never write when he could talk, give someone the silence of reading when he could get the words across with his own choice of pacing and punch. Sitting up in their bed – Kim had known immediately upon waking that something was wrong, Jimmy usually nudged her back to the left side of the bed, and she rolled smack in the middle of it – she played it again.

_Hey. It’s me. I, uh, I’m heading out for awhile. I’m fine, nobody’s in any trouble with Johnny Law. I just… you know. Love ya._

He sounded tired. He sounded tired a lot lately, not that that was entirely surprising. Since the funeral, Kim wasn’t sure he was sleeping more than an hour a night. She walked into the kitchen almost every morning to find Jimmy already there, dressed and making breakfast. Even earlier in the morning than that, she could hear him wandering around downstairs, doors and cabinets opening and closing. 

And today, he was awake so early that he had vanished from their bed, her home, his car from the driveway. No shower steam wafted in from the bathroom just a few feet away. 

_Hey. It’s me. I, uh, I’m heading out for awhile. I’m fine, nobody’s in any trouble with Johnny Law. I just… you know. Love ya._

Goddammit, Jimmy.

She eased herself out of bed, another spike of irritation when she realized how long it was going to take her to get dressed; it took almost ten minutes to make the hooks on her bra behave with only one good arm. She didn’t particularly like needing help getting dressed – “I got a lot more experience getting these off,” Jimmy cracked at least once a week – but the irritating of struggling through it alone far outweighed any loss pride.

When she finally got on jeans and a sweatshirt ten minutes later, slightly out of breath and with her shoelaces still untied, she noticed a handful of Jimmy’s clothes were missing too. If he had been dragged out of the house by a disgruntled former client, they were considerate enough to pack him several changes of clothes in varying levels of formality. 

_Hey. It’s me. I, uh, I’m heading out for awhile. I’m fine, nobody’s in any trouble with Johnny Law. I just… you know. Love ya._

Kim sat down on the floor, flipped the phone shut. She had court at four that afternoon, a weed charge against an eighteen year old white boy. A case she could fight in her sleep, but that didn't mean she wanted to appear in front of the judge in Old Navy's finest. On the other hand, she couldn’t imagine going through the ordeal of changing again, zipping her skirt and tying her hair up.

How would she even call into work, to Viola or the DA's office?  _Sick? Personal day? My boyfriend has fled in the night?_

Fuck this. He couldn’t just disappear into the night. Well, he could. But he wouldn’t, not on her.

Kim opened the phone again and had dialed out half of Viola’s number before remembering her paralegal had called in for the morning, citing a dental appointment. Kim couldn’t turn the wheel fast enough with only one working arm, so for the past couple weeks Jimmy dropped her off at the courthouse on his way to the cell phone store. She hadn’t realized how much of her day he was woven into.

He had a lot of practice with that, after all, taking care of the ill and infirm with such lightness and ease they didn’t even realize he was there, pulling all the strings so they could get through the day. Only when he was gone did they look up, into the empty theater rafters, and realize they’d been left helpless. 

_Hey. It’s me. I, uh, I’m heading out for awhile. I’m fine, nobody’s in any trouble with Johnny Law. I just… you know. Love ya._

Her phone buzzed and she almost slipped sideways trying to answer it, cutting off her umpteenth listen to the voicemail. “Jimmy?”

A long pause. “ _Hi, Kim. It’s Howard._ ”

Kim tucked a few loose hairs behind her ear, a headache starting to smart in her left temple. “This really isn’t a good time-”

“ _I’m outside_.”

“...My apartment?” Kim rocked backwards on her ass in order to get enough momentum to push herself back onto her feet, peering out the bedroom window and onto the street. Sure enough, a gleaming silver Lexus idled below her. “What’s wrong?”

“ _I got a voicemail from Jimmy at two o'clock this morning,_ ” Howard said. “ _He said you would need a ride to work."_

Kim pursed her lips. "I could have just called a cab."

" _I...I wasn’t busy._ ” His voice was rougher than Kim ever heard it, more exhausted than Jimmy, and scratchy like he had taken up smoking and hadn’t quite gotten it down yet. “ _Is he sick?”_

Kim rubbed her eye with a fist. “I… am not going to work either. I need to find something. Could…” She sighed, and set her teeth together, forcing the next sentence through her body's resistance. “I could still use a ride."

After all, she had quite a few more voicemails to make sense of.


	2. Chapter 2

Kim almost choked on Howard’s cologne when she got into the passenger’s seat. She wrinkled her nose without meaning to, and Howard gave her a twitchy side glance.

“I didn’t have time to shower this morning,” he said.

Kim had never seen him so ruffled. His tied was pulled loose around his neck and he’d thrown his suit jacket in the backseat, the sleeves of his button up pushed to his elbows in crumpled rolls. And his eyes. Howard Hamlin regularly worked sixteen hour days, and his eyes had never looked darker and more exhausted than right now.

“Are you okay to drive?” She asked.

“I’m fine, Kim,” Howard snapped, and then exhaled, flexing his fingers around the wheel. “I’m fine. Where can I take you?”

Kim sat in silence for a moment, feeling increasingly foolish as the realization she had no answer washed over the car. “Jimmy’s missing.”

“He’s _missing?_ ” Kim shot him a look, and Howard held it with equal annoyance. “As in missing, missing? AMBER alerts and German Shepherds sweeping the desert?”

“Well, I don’t think we need to call the search parties yet,” she held up her phone. “I think he just… ran off somewhere. I need to see he’s okay.”

Howard closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. “So, once again, everything has to be on hold to deal with Jimmy’s nonsense.”

Kim slapped the phone down against her leg. “Don’t you dare.”

“This is acceptable to you? Grown men do not just vanish. He clearly doesn’t value either of our time if he’s sending you on some wild scavenger hunt-”

“He’s not _sending me_ anywhere. I’m looking for him because I am _worried_.” Kim’s fingers curled around the door; to push it open or just as a rage absorber, she wasn’t yet sure. “You know, shockingly, Chuck’s death may have had a deeper impact on his brother than on you.”

Howard reared back like Kim took a swing at him. She swore she saw his lip tremble for a second, before he straightened his back and turned back towards the road.

“Okay. We’re Jimmy McGill. Where do we go to get away from our lives?” _From us._

Kim pressed her thumb against the 1 on her phone and played the next message.

_Hey, me again. Is it like 110 degrees back at the house? It’s always been way too hot for me here. What’s that line? “This city shouldn’t exist, it’s a testament to man’s hubris.” When I first moved here, I couldn’t be outside for more than, like, half an hour without getting dizzy. You’re from the north too, you get it. Well, north-ish. Central. One of my favorite places in the city was the HMM office because it had air conditioning. On the weekends I used to just eat an ungodly amount of ice cream. I think back to then and I just taste chocolate-vanilla swirl. It's funny, the things you remember._

Howard nodded. “Okay, so we call the office and check if anyone saw him there.”

Kim shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Jimmy would take refuge in the place that had rejected him so soundly and repeatedly. “I think we should check downtown. You know, the pizza places, somewhere he could get ice cream.” Her eyes lit up with the formation of an actual idea. “The Dog House, we go there all the time. Maybe someone saw him today.”

“Okay, good.” Howard spoke mainly to himself, but Kim’s eyebrow arched.

“Don’t want them to know you’re not really sick?”

If the Kim of five years ago - the Kim of ten months ago, even - heard the way she spoke to her former boss, the woman would cover her mouth with her hand and tackle Present Kim to the ground, berate her for an hour about destroying her hard-fought career. Even now, some base part of her froze, terrified of the strike back.

Now, though, Howard just sighed and put the car into drive. “Ice cream. Honestly. I told you, _grown men_ don’t disappear.”

Kim’s heart thudded against her chest, and she hated herself for feeling relief, a sense of escape. Howard turned at the end of her street, and she noticed he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. She still had enough decorum not to bring it up, but only just barely.

* * *

His father called him into his office “to talk privately” almost four years to the day after Howard began work at HHM. For a moment, Howard mused as he closes the heavy mahogany door quietly behind him, this anniversary is the reason for the meeting. But he quickly dismisses this childish thought. Howard Hamlin Sr. rarely spoke to his son at work, said he wanted to avoid any appearances of nepotism.

Howard privately thinks that ship may have sailed when the man promoted a twenty six-year-old to a named partner at the firm, but he’s not one to argue. His weak attempt to strike out as a solo practitioner just after graduation was so easily squashed _because_ of all the perks his father offered him. The salary three times higher than any of his former classmates were making, the new company car, and for the most part, being left to his own devices in his office just down the hall.

Today, again, being an exception.

“I need you to be more conscious about the way you present yourself to our clients,” his father said after a long pause. He didn’t look up from a set of heavy gold pens on the edge of his desk.

Howard’s eyebrows knit together, genuinely confused. “Present myself.”  

His father’s jaw shifted, grinding down on his back teeth. He picked up one of the pens and rolled it gently between his finger and thumb. “Dinner with the representatives from Mendoza Plastics?”

Howard continued to stare, nonplussed. He had accompanied his mother and father to dinner with Ari Mendoza and his wife, but it hadn’t been _as their son._ Just as another partner at the firm. Was he supposed to be acting like the former? Is that was his father was ticked about? That seemed a bit ridiculous, he was thirty-one in September. To buy time, he shifted in his chair, and crossed his legs.

Howard Sr., almost imperceptibly, flinched.

 _Do you have anybody special in your life, Howard?_ Mrs. Mendoza had asked when conversation drifted to their own daughter’s upcoming wedding. _Oh come on, of course he does!_ Mr. Mendoza said. _Handsome guy like him, a lawyer? He’s got to have girls pounding down his door._

Howard had laughed, awkwardly. _Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty busy with work, lately._

His father steered the conversation, with forced joviality, back to the location of the daughter’s wedding, how beautiful Catalina Island was in the summer. Across the table, Mrs. Mendoza shared a quick look with his mother, one that, if he had to put a name on, would be sympathy.

Ah. Now he got it.

Howard uncrossed his legs. His father dropped the pen back on the desk. “Son, I just don’t want your personal life to impede your career, or the firm.” He looked up, finally, and the  glimmer in his eyes is almost kind. “It’s going to be yours to run one day, after all.”

Howard swallowed, tapped his fist against the arm of the chair. Beyond a brief, eye contactless chat about condoms when he was in the 9th grade, no one in his family had verbally acknowledged any of the specifics of his romantic life. Mainly, the gender of the people he was using those condoms with.

His mother stopped asking about girlfriends when he was in college. Until today, his father had never even made an allusion to it. That’s what they did, never discussed anything, just let what happened happen in silence.

They knew, but God forbid he tell them.

Still, Howard Sr. looked at him, waiting for an answer. “You understand?”

“Yes.” He hated how quiet his words sounded. Without letting another one escape, he stood, nodded curtly, and willed his face not to go red until he was out in the hall.

“Howard?”

Shit. Howard started, his back bumping against his father’s shut door. Chuck McGill stood less than a foot away from him, a manilla folder clutched in his hand. Two steps from walking into a thoroughly WASPy humiliation.

“Are you sick?” Chuck asked. “You look flushed.”

Howard smiled. “Oh? No, I’m fine.”

Chuck nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing down in suspension. Howard looks down at his hands, where just the beginning of varicose veins are starting to protrude. All ten of Chuck’s fingers are bare. Howard hates him, for a brief moment, before stepping aside so Chuck can meet with his father.

He had his hand on the door before Howard blurted out “hey, Chuck, would you want to grab a drink sometime?”

Chuck paused. He turned around at the shoulder and studied Howard an air of suspicion, like he couldn’t tell if he was being made fun of. “At a bar?” He said dubiously, a laugh caught in his throat. Howard shook his head, held up his hands.

“In the office, even.”

Chuck nodded, considering this. “Okay, Howard. If I’m not too busy tonight.”

After work, with a stomach full of $150 scotch, Howard stopped by a pawn shop in downtown Albuquerque and bought a nondescript gold wedding band, just to have.

* * *

Kim had never been to the Dog House during the day, and the restaurant looked strange, washed out, without it’s glowing neon sign and piping. A few teenagers sat at one of the picnic tables, sharing a paper carton of cheese fries, but otherwise the area was deserted.

“Hi, have you seen, um, he’s about five-ten, sandy hair–” Kim raised her hand a few inches about her own head to illustrate this, but the man standing in the window cut her off before she went farther.

“I’ve seen you two come here before. He’s _chatty,_ isn’t he?”

The corner of Kim’s mouth involuntarily twitched upwards. “Yeah, that’s the one. Have you seen him today? Maybe late yesterday?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t work Thursday nights. Didn’t see him today. You a cop?”

Kim leaned back on her heels. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I never told him he could sell those burners ‘round here so if that’s what this is about I am not compliant.”

Behind her, Howard scoffed softly. He was lucky Kim was wearing her Chucks and not a pair of heels she could drive into his foot. Leaning lightly against the counter, she tried a tight smile.

“No one is in any trouble, I’m just trying to find him.”

The man sized her up for a long, silent moment, before squinting over her shoulder at Howard. “What about him? He’s dressed like a G-Man.”

“Goodbye,” Kim said, and turned to leave to quickly she bumped into Howard. He swayed, catching himself seconds before the fall on the edge of the nearest picnic table. Kim reached out and grabbed his waist to steady him, an awkward and ineffectual act with just one hand. Howard’s eyes flicked up in discomfort and she let go.

“Sorry, I haven’t eaten today,” he said, flexing his toes in his shoes. “Got a little dizzy.”

“Sit down, Howard.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sit _down_.” Kim walked back to the counter, and the man stiffened at the sight of her. “Hello again,” she said. “If I am a cop, does that entitle me to free fries?”

She had her hands on Jimmy’s waist like that two nights before, on the couch, lazily pinning him down with the gentle weight of her body on top of his. Jimmy was much quieter than people would guess during sex. Mostly, he focused on what he was doing; running his hand down her spine, pressing his mouth against the swell of her breasts, pressing his knee in between her legs. Usually a hum, a moan, occasionally a whispered “oh, fuck” was all she’d get out of him.

The night on the couch, though ( _the last time_ , the darkest part of her brain piped up) he had been almost silent. Kim had shifted to one side and noticed in a thin flash of sight that Jimmy was kissing her with his eyes wide open, staring off at some vague something in her hairline.

God, why hadn’t she stopped? Why hadn’t she held him by the shoulders and demanded to know what was wrong until the repressed Irish maniac had spit it out. Instead she just lay her head against his chest after she came, feeling his chest rise and fall slowly against her ear. Breathing mistaken for serenity.

Kim dropped the tray on the table and and sat down hard. Howard picked up a fry and examined it. “Why is it shaped like this?”

“It’s a crinkle-cut fry,” Kim said, plucking it out of his hand and biting it in half. “It zig-zags.”


	3. Chapter 3

Mrs. Nguyen didn’t say anything outright, but Kim was sure she recognized her as she let them into the salon. Her eyes narrowed thinner and thinner as Kim explained they weren’t here for manicures, but to check if Jimmy had holed up in his former apartment. 

“Apartment puts it loosely,” Mrs. Nguyen sniffed. To Kim's relief, she didn't seem to place her from the security cameras. The woman who came into the salon at three in the morning, sat with her feet in the dry pedicure baths, having long conversations with Jimmy. The woman who, in one embarrassing instance, had stayed over for a night and emerged in nothing but her panties and one of Jimmy's old sweatshirts to grab cucumber water at what she _thought_ was before opening (Kim still felt she really must've traumatized that group of Girl Scouts).

Howard arched his neck to look over her, clearly puzzled by how anyone could fit a living space into the long, narrow line of massage chairs and round tables. “If you see him, tell him to get his crap out of here, he doesn’t pay enough in rent to bring fire hazard into my shop.” She stopped with her back half turned and nodded to Howard. “You should make an appointment. Bit nails not pretty on anyone.”

Howard sighed, held his hands up to his face to look closer. “I know.”

Not for the first time, Kim wondered if Howard was gay. She had always lacked Jimmy’s ability to clock another queer person in their midst – “my poor baby, growing up in a red state,” he cracked – but then, she’d never spent this much time with Howard as a person, rather than a boss and Certified Professional. Perhaps Howard wasn’t even sure himself. Kim was absolutely _not_ going to be the one to start him on that spiral, in the fragile state where he already existed.

 _Enough, counselor._ She chided herself. There were bigger mysteries to deal with right now.

The light was on in the cramped, glorified closet, and a thin layer of dust covered everything but the desk. There, a few dozen burner phones were stacked, still in their sealed boxes. On the futon – currently folded back into a cracked leather couch – was a newspaper folded in half. No Jimmy. Kim sat down, crossing her ankles.

“He lived here?” Howard asked, his voice very quiet.

“A public defender’s salary doesn’t allow for a two bedroom downtown.” Listlessly, Kim picked up the newspaper. The crossword and brainteaser were filled out in dark purple ink. Her eyes flicked up to the date in the corner and her heart jumped.

“He was here. This is today’s paper.” She held the _Albuquerque Journal_ aloft. Howard bent over at the waist over to examine it, but just as quickly straightened up, unimpressed.

“You don’t know that was him. One of the salon ladies could have filled that out. This should be their break room.”

“Howard, how many people do you know who do the crossword in pen?” Howard’s eyebrows lifted and an urge to shove him seized her. She settled on testily saying, “ _What?”_

“Nothing,” Howard said. “It’s just– Chuck used to do that too.”

Kim lowered the paper, held it in her lap. Howard’s right foot twitched, taking an abortive step forward to sit next to her, before retreating and walking to sit behind the desk, in Jimmy’s creaking swivel chair.

“Do you think they knew?” Howard asked, finally. Kim stared down at the little filled in blocks, at eight down, and didn’t answer. _Held together, like book pages_ , B-O-U-N-D. “So what’s the deal with this cell phone thing?” He tried. “Is it legal for him to sell them out of the back of a nail salon?”

Kim flicked the corner of the paper with her thumb. “You should know that, Howard.”

Howard’s eyes flashed. “Well excuse me, my specialty isn’t low-level criminal law.”

“What _is_ your specialty, Howard? Why aren't you at work? Isn’t HHM threatening to capsize at any moment?” Kim felt a nastiness curling around the edges of her words. A clipped tone was working its way back into her voice, a rare sighting of the Pissed Off Midwesterner she could usually push down.She stood up, still clutching the newspaper under her arm. “Or can you not work it out without your daddy holding your hand?”

Howard sprung up from the desk and pulled his own phone out of his pocket with a grand sweeping motion, knocking over a few of Jimmy’s boxes as he did. “I told you, your unstable boyfriend left me _this_.”

_Howard, it’s Jimmy. I need you to pick up Kim this morning, take her to get coffee, bring her to court, whatever she needs. She can’t drive with her cast, and I’m otherwise engaged. Besides, you owe me._

Kim looked down, her chin pressing against her chest. Howard sighed and sat again, shaking a little from his outburst. “He can be such a brat,” she murmured.  

“I hurt him, I know, by my part in Chuck's...” Howard swallowed, briefly squeezed his eyes shut, and exhaled sharply before continuing. Kim felt rather like she was watching a computer boot up. “I really liked him when he first came in. I used to call him Charlie Hustle.”

“Yeah, why _did_ you do that?” Kim had forgotten it until Howard brought it up at the bar tribunal, but it rang in her ears the way an old familiar song did.

“You know, he busted his ass pulling off things like this,” Howard pointed to the cell phones. “Going to law school on the sly, things like that. It’s just a nickname.”

“It’s his _brother’s_ name.”

Howard’s eyes got darker and wider as the sentence sunk in. A hand crept up to grip the side of his hair. Kim almost laughed.

“They did get intertwined at the end, didn’t they?” He managed, finally. “Couldn’t talk about one without the other. Are you an only child?” He asked Kim. She nodded. “Yeah, me too.”

* * *

 “You have to understand, tonight was… very out of character for me,” Chuck said, sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to the headboard.

“Mmm,” Howard replied, rolling his head side to side against the pillow. His neck was starting to cramp, and he really wanted a cigarette, but he was afraid if he got out of bed he might spook Chuck.

“So you understand that there won’t a repeat performance.” Chuck laughed humorlessly at the end of the sentence. Standing up, he walked to the windows of his bedroom, staring out at the dark, flat desert that stretched into the horizon.

As a rule, Howard didn’t sleep with straight guys. Easy enough a rule on paper, instated for himself after a few too many college heartbreaks with boys who slept with him once or twice and then avoided him for three years, always referring to their time together as an “experiment.”  

Howard didn’t need to experiment. Howard had come to a scientific conclusion when he was thirteen years old. He wasn’t interested in wasting time with those still running their lab results.

Except. Chuck invited him into his office and then his home for a drink with increasing frequency after that first time. Chuck told him about his recent divorce, assured him it was amicable and he still held Rebecca in the highest regard. Howard believed him, could see in his eyes that their was no ill will, just loneliness.

Chuck had really, really blue eyes.

“Chuck, relax.” Howard rolled onto his side, looking at the nightstand a few inches from his face. It must have been Rebecca’s, a pitch-tuner still sat there, next to a few stray pens and a faded picture of a woman holding a little boy up on the counter of a drug store. The woman was focused on holding the boy upright, but the child, maybe six or seven, was grinning, waving with both hands at the camera. The same blue eyes, but lighter hair, the last shade of brown before it became dark blonde.  Howard reached out and picked it up. “Wait, do you have a kid?”

Chuck turned around, mildly confused, before seeing what Howard was holding. “That’s my mother,” he said distractedly. “And my brother.”

“Older or younger?”

“Younger. _Much_ younger.” Chuck reached for his navy blue robe and tied it tightly around his waist. “I need you to promise me that what happened here tonight doesn’t leave this room.”

Howard considered this, let Chuck sit in agony for a full five seconds before saying “of course.”

Because just knowing it happened is enough for him. The next time his father checks to make sure he’s wearing his sham wedding ring before they walk into a company party, he’ll just remember how he kissed Chuck on the oiled couch HHM bought, after a long, charged, whiskey-soaked stare. When Howard Sr. looks away whenever he tries to catch his eye, or tells him again the adjustments to his being he is expected to make in order to stay in favor, Howard can just stare at him, _think your esteemed partner fucked me in his own bed, and I liked it._

Chuck’s shoulders sagged, losing the tension Howard didn’t realize they held. He walked back to sit on the other side of the bed, the mattress sinking a little under his weight. “Look at me,” he said.

Slowly, Howard rolled over onto his stomach, lifting his head off Rebecca’s pillow, glaring up from under his eyebrows. A petulant move, but Chuck didn’t seem to pick up on it.

“Thank you,” Chuck said. And then he lifted the crumbled bedclothes, lying down on his back parallel to Howard. Howard watched him reach into the drawer of his own night table and take out the newspaper and a black pen. He held it above his face, slowly filling in the boxes of a half finished crossword, until they both drifted off.

* * *

Kim's hair started to feel heavy on her neck and shoulders, but she didn't have the energy to attempt a one-handed ponytail.

"We should keep looking," she said, tucking as much hair as she could behind her ear.

They moved back into the nail salon proper, out into the parking lot where the heat of the day hit them like a slap in the face. Howard undid his tie, stuffed it in the pocket of his pants. Before he could open the door to the car, Kim reached out and stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“You need to keep breathing,” she told him. “It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.”

This. Was _this_ their search, some predetermined amount of time they simply had to endure until they found Jimmy? Or was _this_ a longer, more nebulous stretch of life? The way reality changed after Chuck-and-Jimmy became Jimmy alone? After Jimmy too began to slip away bit by bit and then in a rush one Friday morning? Kim didn't know. She didn't want to examine her own words too carefully, for fear their true meaning would be too harsh or too piercing for her to withstand. 

Howard nodded wordlessly, and pushed by her, slamming the car door behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

_I got married when I was nineteen. She was twenty-four, and while the state of Illinois saw us as man and wife for eleven years, we really only lasted about ten months. For the most part, it’s not something I dwell on unless I’m filling out, like, a tax form. “Are you married? Separated or divorced?” (Lemme tell you, that is a truly humbling box to check off when you’re twenty-one.) But for some reason it’s been on my mind a lot lately, just another thing I fucked up. I thought that she was some great, perfect first love. But the true winner of that title wouldn’t come along for a couple more decades. I’ve always been embarrassed to tell you that. All of that._

Kim wished she hadn’t played that message while they drove. Howard’s car felt too airless and little to hold something so large. Howard, to his credit, knew to look away, his Adam’s apple bobbing uncomfortably.

“When did you two get together?” He asked, with forced lightness. “I feel like you’ve been joined at the hip as long as I’ve known you.”

Kim didn’t know the exact date, with so many false starts and moments of almost. She didn’t even really remember _meeting_ Jimmy, try as she might. She remembers early, when hair was thicker and she didn’t get headaches so quickly, but she couldn’t remember earliest. “I’m not sure. I’ve never counted the months.” _Years_ , now.

“I remember the day I met him, it was his first day in the mailroom,” Howard said. The lightness in his voice seemed more natural, as if he read Kim’s mind and delighted in knowing something she didn’t. “Chuck was _very_ on edge, the whole day. He woke up at three, four in the morning and just _paced._ I think he expected Jimmy to set a fire or start a blackjack game in the basement.” Howard started to flush as he bit down quietly on the end of the sentence. It took Kim a moment to realize why.

“You were there when he woke up?” She asked. She tried to keep her voice noncommittal, but a sort of smirk crept into the _when._ A feeling not unlike when she finally tripped up a witness on cross examination swelled in her chest. _Ah-ha. Gotcha._

Howard seemed to steel something inside of himself, and squared his shoulders, lifting his chin and staring straight out at the road. “We should call some of his associates. That paralegal who used to work at the office you two shared, maybe.”

Kim had a bizarre impulse to reach out, touch his arm in comfort. When she leaned towards him, though, Howard twisted his body as far away as he could get while still holding onto the wheel with both hands.

“Kim, this is not about me.”

Kim’s lips parted slightly, then pressed back together. She forced her face to relax. “Francesca isn’t a paralegal. She’s a receptionist.”

Speaking of the former - she checked the time, and knew, with a pang, she wasn’t going to make court today. She punched in Viola’s number as Howard leaned forward, pressing his arms against the steering wheel so hard he inadvertently honked the horn, and sprung back like he’d been doused in hot water. Kim wondered if she might be a safer driver even with only one arm.

“Viola, hi. Look, there’s been a...family emergency, I’m not going to make it to court today. I need you to call Juarez. No, it should be him, he represented him last time, he knows the history. Tell him I’ll owe him one if he goes in for me. It’s weed and Jesse is harmless. Exactly, he’s got those big eyes, they’ll be in and out in twenty minutes. Okay, thank you.”

Howard straightened up a little. “Are you doing pro bono cases now? Can you even afford to do that?”

Kim clenched her phone. “I do fine.”

Howard turned on the radio, twisting the volume on a new Britney Spears song up just high enough to make Kim’s ears sting. Here came one of those headaches.

* * *

The performance, it turned out, did have a few repeats. Just an encore or two. Were they called encores or just one singular? Howard wasn’t the right kind of gay man to ask that. All he knew is that he and Chuck kept sleeping together, and he was still having fun.

Chuck didn’t know how to meet women, nor did he have the patience or charm to sway any of the ones he already knew. Howard wondered if he was a virgin before he met Rebecca – the man went to college age fourteen, that didn’t bode well for normal teenage milestones even with the best of social skills – but the withering glare Chuck shot him when he joked about it kept him from seriously asking. He certainly didn’t fuck like one.

“Did he say anything strange to the associates? Did anybody complain about him?” Chuck asked as Howard hung up his jacket on one the wooden hangers in Chuck’s closet, stripping down to his undershirt and boxers for the night. “What about the UNM students? They’re all trapped in the basement with him all day?”

“Nobody said _anything_ ,” Howard replied, for the second time. “I don’t understand what you’re so worried about. I expected him to have neck tattoos or something. He showed up wearing a tie, he’s friendly to everyone. He’s funny.”

Chuck’s eyes flashed at this, but he swallowed and the fire was gone just as fast. Howard sat down and reached across the bed to rub his shoulder.

“Look, I understand the stressors of family.” Chuck half-chuckled, nodded in acknowledgement. Emboldened, Howard moved closer, the side of his leg pressing against’ Chuck’s and his hands moved from one shoulder to two. “He’s in the mailroom. How much harm could he do?”

Chuck shook his head. “We shall see what we shall see.” He looked up suddenly, just coming back to the room from his stewing thoughts. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi.” Howard leaned over Chuck’s shoulder and kissed him.

There was a second of tension – somewhere deep down, he knew, Chuck genuinely didn’t want to touch him – before Chuck returned it, lightly brushing his hand against the shorn side of Howard’s hair. Pulling back, he heaved a heavy sigh, hand resting on Howard’s neck.

“You know, I’m finding myself very awake. Would you like a late dinner?” Howard smiled. “Give me twenty minutes, I’ll get the steaks going.” He pat Howard’s knee and stood up. “And put on some pants before you come down.”

“Tyrant,” Howard laughed, swinging his legs to the other side of the bed. It wasn’t until Chuck left the room that he noticed how warm he felt, how much his stomach tingled.

Oh _shit._

* * *

Francesca picked up on the first ring, and relief flooded Kim’s veins before she said a word. She heard someone yelling in the background. Not distressed yelling, panicked or afraid, but annoyed yelling. “-try it sometime!” A voice, _the_ voice, she knew.

“Kim, thank God,” Francesca said. “Come collect your... Jimmy.”

It took Howard awhile to figure out the directions to Francesca’s apartment. Twice he accidentally got onto the highway and had to drive seven miles towards Arizona before he could turn around.  

“Didn’t you grow up here?” Kim blurted out, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. Her leg bounced anxiously, knocking against the door. She couldn’t shake the feeling they were chasing Jimmy, that if they didn’t move fast enough he’d escape again.

“I don’t spend a lot of time cruising the backroads,” Howard said shortly. “That seems more your boyfriend’s pastime.”

Howard didn’t spend much time doing anything. He went to work, took clients out to dinner and one of five approved restaurants, the choice made dependent on how rich HHM was trying to look, and then went home. Kim’s own routine couldn’t boast much more divergence. Throw in falling asleep in front of the Turner Classic Movie channel three or four times a week and that was her social life, too.

At least she had Jimmy to fall asleep on the couch with. Howard had a beautiful, empty house. For that, she let his latest snide remark pass without comment.

When they pulled onto Francesca’s street, Kim pushed open the door before the car had come to a stop and half tumbled out in front of her apartment building. The toe of her sneaker got caught under her step and she fell on her knees, scraping them like a child. A warm sting spread across the right one, and she didn’t have to look down to know blood was seeping through her jeans.

Howard hooked his hands under her arms and she tensed, but he only lifted her up off the ground.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

“You’re welcome.”

He helped her, slightly limping, to the front door of the building and she pressed the button with LIDDY taped up next to it.

“ _Kim?_ ” Francesca’s voice crackled over the comm. In a surge of distracted guilt, Kim wondered if Francesca was home in the middle of the day.

“Hi, yes, I–”

“ _I couldn’t get him to stay_.”

The cushions on Francesca’s couch were pulled out of place and lined up on the floor, into a long, makeshift mattress. Otherwise, nothing was out of the ordinary, no sign of anybody else.

“He came by really early this morning,” she said, bustling into her kitchen nook to make coffee for Howard and Kim, despite both parties’ polite refusal. “Like, two, three in the morning. He asked if he could rest on my couch for a little.” She cut a glance towards Kim as she set both cups on the kitchen table. “I assumed you’d had some sort of fight.”

Howard turned to look at her, annoyance creeping onto his face. _You’ve dragged me all over town for a lovers quarrel?_ Kim took a sip of the coffee – too much sugar – and shook her head.

“He was asleep last night when I went to bed. He’s been, um, he’s working at a cell phone store, down on Claremont, he gets home a few hours before me.” The tightness of shame contracting in her throat was followed quickly by anger. Did he think she was embarrassed by him, is that why he left? _Are you, Kim? How broken are the two of you that he did this and you don't even know why?_ “Are you–what have you been doing since Wexler-McGill shut down? Back at the DMV?”

“God, no.” Francesca smoothed down her skirt as she sat down in one of the mismatched chairs, scraping it against her floor. “I’ve been temping. My last assignment ended two weeks ago.”

“That’s nice,” Howard said absently. “Why did Jimmy say he was here?”

“He had a bag, so I figured he was taking more than an hour to cool off from whatever happened. I told him I’m not running a hotel, but he did that thing with his eyes that makes you feel like you’re kicking a dog. So I let him sleep, but he wasn’t out for very long. He started to make breakfast… _very_ loudly.” Francesca blinked, twisted her mouth before continuing. “He is really not himself.”

“Did he say where he was going when he left?” Howard asked.

Francesca jutted her chin towards Kim. “He _said_ he was going home.”

“Well, clearly not,” Howard said. “Thank you for your time…?”

“Francesca.”

“Of course. We’ll get out of your hair.” Howard stood and reached to button his suit jacket back up before realizing he wasn’t wearing one. He settled for curling his hand and awkwardly patting his stomach with it.

Kim made to stand too, before she felt a pressure on her cast; Francesca grabbed her arm.

“He told me he was sorry about the firm shutting down, asked me if I needed any money.” She reached into the breast pocket of her blouse and pulled out two crisp fifty dollar bills. “I took it on principle, but you can have it back.” Kim shook her head and Francesca slipped it back in her shirt.

“Howard, go start the car,” Kim said.

He bristled. “I will go out into the hall.”

Neither woman said anything until Francesca’s front door shut behind him. Kim bounced her weight from foot to foot, the stinging from her scraps becoming more noticeable without conversation to distract her. Francesca bent over to look down at the brownish-red stain.

“Oh yikes, hon. You’re getting banged up lately, huh?” For the second time in an hour, Kim felt herself being gently guided by her arms, eased back down into the chair. Francesca rolled up her jeans to the knee and bounced up to the sink, wetting a rag and dabbing it lightly on the cut.

Kim’s face flushed. “Francesca, you don’t–”

“Yeah, I get it, you’re tough. You’re still gonna get an infection.” Francesca smirked. Kim let her head drop back against the top of her spine. “He freaked out when he heard us talking on the phone. Maybe you should give him some time to be alone.”

“I think I gave him too much time alone,” she said.

“His brother died not too long ago, right?” Francesca said, reaching into the drawer behind her to get a band-aid. “People react to pain in a lot of different ways.”

_You’re probably pissed at me. I’d be pissed at me too. Chuck was always pissed at me, I just didn’t notice until the end._


	5. Chapter 5

“We need to call the police,” Howard firmly announced, as they stood in the landing of Francesca’s apartment building. “I don’t know why we didn’t earlier.”

Kim started down the steps, steadying herself with a hand against the wall. “Let’s not make any decisions until we get to the car.”

Howard planted on the step below her and crossed his arms. “No.”

“ _No?_ ”

“Kim, he could be seriously ill. He’s visiting his old friends to tell them he’s sorry, he’s giving away money. All the warning signs are there.”

Howard was a tall man, at least six-one, and while he was no stranger to using his imposing presence as a wall, he usually he wasn’t so desperate about it. He held his hands out, face strained and lined. If he reached out and grabbed her, turned her around and held her against his chest like a hostage, she wouldn’t be surprised. So she sat down on the step, looked up at him.

“He isn’t depressed.”

“Yeah, well, they never seem like they are, do they?” Howard said bitterly. “God, I don’t understand why you’re acting like this is a lost dog. This is your boyfriend, and he could be out there standing on the edge a bridge, or driving into the desert to dry up.”

“He packed clothes, he’s not jumping of a bridge.”

“Maybe that’s to throw you off while he goes to some motel–”

“And sets himself on fire?” Kim snapped, before she could stop herself. Not that extra time would’ve prevented it.

Howard stepped down, putting two more stairs between them. “This is not a fun little savior trip for you to work out your guilt over Chuck’s death, okay? This is about the last surviving member of that entire family. He has been suffocating slowly since he put his big brother in the ground and nobody could see it was happening!”

“Including you!”

Kim clapped both hands onto her bloodied kneecaps, feeling the fight leak out of her. “Yeah. Including me. But I’m trying to fix it. He is _this close_ to getting his license back. You call the police, you tell them that he is suicidal, and that’s it. Jimmy never gets to practice law again. Is that what you want? Ruin his life as some penance to Chuck?”

“Fuck you, Kim!” Howard said. Kim sprung to her feet and raced down the stairs.

* * *

Howard’s love life was so pathetic that he didn’t even have an impressive blow up fight to mark the end of his… thing… with Chuck. It just started happening less and less. Howard’s father retired and he found himself so busy supporting the work of both Hs in HHM that he could barely drive home without falling asleep, much less have sex.

Chuck too seemed to withdraw. Perhaps his workload was getting heavier as well, in addition to the stress of Jimmy constantly calling him at strange hours with questions about obscure New Mexico legal technicalities (“I don’t even want to guess what he’s up to.”) Perhaps, though, as Howard thought in his particularly annoyed and drunken states, he had the itch scratched. His late-in-life bi-curiosity sated by just a few months of sleeping with the firms’ resident fag.

Howard added even nastier words to this thought on occasion. Dr. Shapiro told him he had to stop doing that.

The last time (though Howard hadn’t known it was the last time then), they lay on top of the covers in Chuck’s bedroom after fucking, still breathing hard. He reached over to flip on the lamp on his nightstand – Rebecca’s nightstand, his mind chided him – but Chuck’s hand on his bare shoulder stopped him.

“Can you keep it off? I’ve been getting these awful headaches from the light lately,” Chuck said. Howard nodded and rolled back over, his head pressed against the side of Chuck’s arm.

Something inside his heart tensed up. They didn’t really cuddle. Chuck was too repressed and Howard just followed his lead. On that night, though, Chuck shifted his arm and pushed it under Howard’s back, wrapping it around his shoulder. Reflexively, Howard lay his head on Chuck’s chest, looking up to see him with his eyes closed, a few new streaks of silver in his hair. He still didn’t fully exhale, afraid to breathe with too much ease against Chuck’s skin. Afraid that it would reveal that he didn’t want Chuck to let go of him. 

 _This is so fucked, Hamlin,_ he thought to himself, and curled in tighter against Chuck’s side.

The next morning, early enough that he beat the sun, he gathered his clothes, the razor and a few skin care products he’d begun to leave in the bathroom. His face burned as he packed all he could fit into his slim briefcase. The rest he held in his hands as he opened the bedroom door with his hip. Chuck was still asleep behind him.

He crept down the stairs with his shoes half-shoved onto his feet, and almost smacked right into Jimmy when he reached the bottom. “Oh my God!”

“Jesus!” Jimmy jumped backwards, dropping a paper bag on the ground and raising both hands in fists, which would’ve made Howard laugh if he wasn’t recovering from a near heart attack. After a second, identifying the stranger as his boss and not a home invader, he lowered them.

“Oh, hey Howard,” Jimmy said slowly, eyebrows knit together in mild confusion, just a few seconds from figuring out the math problem. When Jimmy first moved to Albuquerque, Howard knew better than to spend the night at Chuck's. The last thing he needed was to run into someone's smartass little brother sleeping on the couch, ready to spread gossip around the entire office. Evidentially, this was still a real danger no matter where Jimmy lived.

“Hello,” he straightened up, resisting the urge to make sure the top button of his shirt was closed. Fidgeting makes you look guilty, any lawyer knows that.

Jimmy jerked his thumb towards the fallen bag. “I, uh, I brought bagels. Chuck and I needed to–our mom is being moved to a different nursing facility? He wanted to talk to me about it?” Casual, affable, Jimmy, but the gleam behind his eyes let Howard know he was caught. He always knew Jimmy was smarter than Chuck gave him credit for.

“Yes, of course, I was–the same, yes.”

“You were talking to Chuck about moving our mom into a new nursing home?”

“...yes.”

Jimmy crouched down and picked up the bag. “Great, so Chuck’s awake?” He made to go up the stairs, but Howard sidestepped and blocked him.

“He’s in the shower?”

Jimmy pressed his lips together, badly fighting down a smirk. “Quiet shower, huh.”

Howard held his gaze. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“It’s amazing what they can do with soundproofing these days,” Jimmy glanced up the stairs and tossed the bag to Howard. “Hey, you know what, I’m gonna come back later.”

“Oh, don’t leave on my account, I’m running out the door.”

Jimmy nodded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Yeah, I can tell. I just figured I’d give you some privacy in your fleeing. I bet you’re not the first of Chuck’s guests to do it.”

Howard pushed by him, knocking their shoulders together, but Jimmy only turned and followed him to the door, waving goodbye as Howard nearly threw himself out onto the walkway.

“Man, chill out,” Jimmy called. “I’m not gonna tell anybody. You know, shockingly, I don’t like thinking about my brother’s sex life in great depth.”

Howard wrenched the passenger’s door of his car open, tossing his products into the seat well. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

* * *

Kim was a fixer. She’d always prided herself on this. On the four flights of stairs down to the street, she already decided to walk a few blocks east and sit on the painted benches out in front the auto shop she sometimes passed on her way to work. There she would call a cab and shell out some of her precious savings to be chauffeured to the next place where Jimmy went, because she sure as hell wasn’t getting back in the car with Howard.

This excellent plan sputtered out, however, at the _where_ section. There was no _next_ that jumped out at her on the Jimmy McGill, This is Your Life tour. If he was doing a farewell tour of his greatest hits, as Howard said, what would be the grand finale?

She thought about it the entire walk to the auto body shop, the sun beating down and making her so hot underneath her cast that she wished for a sharp knife or industrial scissors, anything that could wrench the five pound plaster cage off of her body. She almost collapsed onto the bench when she finally arrived, lifting her hair off her neck, trying to blame how fast her heart was beating on the exertion.

Kim went to the Art Institute in Chicago once, when she was seventeen.

It was on a school trip, to celebrate the seniors last week of high school; a cramped, eight-hour bus ride for two days in the Windy City. Kim started saving all her babysitting money from the time she was fifteen. If she already came up with the $300 before she brought the permission slip to her mother, she couldn’t say no, couldn’t list the payments needed on the car, the strange soft patch of roof in the back of their mobile home that couldn’t seem to hold rain no matter how many times Kim repaired it.

She wasn’t going to let that happen. This $300 was for her.

It seemed very few of her classmates had had the wherewithal to plan ahead like that, though. Kim ended up riding across state lines for the first time in her life, with four other people in her already small graduating class. They were all from the nicer part of town, the one with freestanding houses and parents who just forked over money for this kind of thing. Three of them hadn’t talked to her since middle school, and Candace Olsen quickly ran out of small talk before they were even past Omaha.

Once they got into the bustle of the city, passed the taxis and got through the shiny chrome doors of the museum, though, Kim didn’t care that no one was talking to her.

Her favorite painting was an oil on canvas by Paul Gauguin. The one she stood in front of for almost twenty minutes as a child, until her legs started cramping and she had to sit down. _No te aha oe riri._ Sinhala for _Why Are You Angry?_

The women in the photo sat on the grass, watching chickens peck the dry grass nearby. One was shirtless. A third stood barefoot, staring off into the distance at something Kim couldn’t quite see. Her expression was unreadable, they all were. There was no answer to the question, but Kim still answered it.

Stood and listed off in her head all that made her furious in her small, hardscrabble life. She didn't have money for college or new clothes or even an overpriced souvenir from the gift shop. Her boyfriend Hugo never read the books she lent him. Her mother didn't care if she came home at two in the morning, or at all. That this brief window into the world outside of Odell, Nebraska was all she was ever going to get. She felt like all the women were listening to her, absorbing all her fury in their impassive way. When she finally plopped down on a stool in the museum cafeteria, she was exhausted.

She wondered if Jimmy had ever been there, stood in front of the women with stone faces. If he saw what she saw. If it mattered that he didn’t.

She took out her phone – down to 16% battery – and pressed speed dial 2. It went to voicemail after two rings, but she wasn’t expecting anything else. She’s rather have the floor to herself for this one.

“Hey asshole. I’m sitting on a bench outside of Vargas Auto Repair and Detailing. I just left Francesca’s, she is very worried about you. I also just left Howard, who is… worried about you in his own way. He thinks you’re about to swallow a whole bottle of Tylenol. Please don’t prove him right. Whatever this is, I can–”

“ _Don’t say you can help_.”

It took Kim a minute to realize the voicemail had cut out. In the static between them, she could hear someone shifting. “Jimmy?”

“ _This whole ‘you clean up my mess’ thing? It’s done now. You don’t have to waste so much time on me._ ”

“Jimmy, where are you?”

“ _I’m fine, everything’s good. I’m just taking a break._ ”

“Are you going somewhere? Francesca said you were going home. Do you want to meet back at the apartment?” Static. “Jimmy, if you don’t tell me where you are I’ll let Howard call the police. You really this the PPD board is gonna like that?”

“ _Yeah. What Francesca said. I’m going home. Love you._ ” Click.

Kim threw her phone against the ground. It didn’t shatter, only bounced into the road. She pushed thin, sweaty pieces of hair out of her eyes.

Jimmy grew up just a few miles from the Art Institute. She always forgot that, so apt he was at setting up shop wherever he landed, showing up with enough confidence that people assumed he’d always been there. But Jimmy had a first day in the desert, just as she did.

She picked up her phone and wiped the screen against her sweatshirt, calling another number. “Hello?”

“ _Where did you walk off to, I’ve been circling the block?_ ” Howard said, annoyed.

“Do you know where Jimmy lived when he first moved here?”

Howard paused. “ _Where did he live?_ ”

“Yeah.”

Howard thought this over, before exhaling sharply out his nose. “ _He lived with Chuck, I think, for a few weeks while he was looking for an apartment._ "

“I know where he is,” Kim said. “He went home.”

“ _To Chicago?_ ” Howard asked, thoroughly confused. 

“To Chuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Did you catch the Bye Bye Birdie reference I made because I cannot control myself?  
> 2) This is No te aha oe riri: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/16496


	6. Chapter 6

Howard drove at six miles an hour next to Kim as she marched up the sidewalk, the window rolled down. He said nothing, only stared at her until she felt increasingly like an overreacting teenager, storming away from her boyfriend. She was hot, and her arm hurt, and she just wanted this to be over. Begrudgingly, she slowed to a stop.

Howard stepped on the brake far too hard, so Kim heard it grinding down. She opened the door, slipped in, and closed the window, awash in a blessed wave of air conditioning. Howard didn’t take his foot off the brake.

“I’m not trying to fuck Jimmy over,” his voice came out very hoarse. “I can’t–losing him too is not what Chuck would’ve wanted.”

Kim stared down the length of the street, watching two gangly teenagers skateboard in the distance. She let herself ask, because Howard wasn’t her boss anymore, and he already cussed her out, and she was dying to know. “Did you wear that wedding ring for Chuck?”

Howard lifted his hands off the wheel, curled them both into fists. Stared at his bare knuckles as if noting for the first time that they were missing adornment. “I wore it for a lot of reasons.”

His face screwed up, seized by sudden pain. With a flush, Howard Hamlin was crying. He released his fists and buried his face in his hands, like that was going to hide what was happening.

Kim fought through a few seconds of confusion and revulsion – she was emphatically _not_ a weepy person, yet she found herself in the company of crying men more and more as her life went on – and turned sideways in her seat, so her good arm could rub Howard’s shoulder. This just seemed to make him sob harder, his broad shoulders shaking. Kim saw a flash of him as a child, the boy-king with a world of expectations already tied to his back. _Poor little rich boy,_ the bitter part of her remarked.

“He needed help and I screwed him over,” Howard said in between uneven breathes. “If we don’t do right by Jimmy–”

“If the past few years should have taught you anything, it’s that Jimmy is not Chuck,” Kim said. Howard scoffed, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand.

“Yes, at least Chuck had the decency not to drag it out. Sorry,” he immediately amended, fresh tears welling as Kim shot him icy daggers. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I’m not handling this like an adult. I didn’t cry this much when my father died."

Kim ran her thumb lightly against the woven fabric of his shirt. “You loved him.”

“I loved my father.”

“Not like that, though.”

Howard nodded, absently lifting his hand to cover Kim’s. “Those McGills, they have a power, don’t they?” Kim said nothing. “I honestly don’t know how you’ve been so stoic through all of this.”

“I am… taking it step by step.” Kim gently pulled her hand out from under his. Howard continued to pat his own shoulder.

“I can’t let this happen again.”

“It’s not going to.”

“But what if it does?”

“You’re not responsible for other people’s dysfunction,” she said. “Everyone makes their own choices.”

“Dr. Shapiro says that all the time,” he mumbled. His eyes flicked towards Kim. “You’re not either.”

Kim looked down at her sneakers, the bottoms lined with a thin rim of dust and dirt. “I’m going to find him,” she said. “Then we’ll go from there.”

“Okay,” Howard took a shaky breath. “Okay, do you remember how to get to the cemetery from here?”

Once again Kim was amazed by how terrible a grown man/lifelong resident of the city could be at directions. This feeling was very quickly overpowered, however, by her own confusion.

“The cemetery? I’m going to Chuck’s house,” she said.

The blood that had flooded to Howard’s face in emotion began to drain away. “What? Why do you want to go back there? There’s nothing there anymore.”

Kim raised an eyebrow. “Jimmy’s not going to hang around a graveyard next to the ten foot tall headstone Chuck designed for himself.”

Howard stiffened. “ _I_ picked that out.”

“Of course you did.”

“It has gravitas.”  Howard’s shoulders slumped, and he wiped his face again, groaning into his hands. Kim reached over and turned the key backwards, cutting the engine.

“Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

* * *

The city of Albuquerque had leveled the charred remains of Chuck’s house a few days after the funeral. Standard practice for a decrepit structure past repair, but Kim suspected the process had been expedited due to complaints by the neighbors. This was a _nice_ neighborhood, where her pro bono work was rarely requested. These upwardly mobile married couples and their young children didn’t want to look at the place where their shut-in neighbor has immolated himself. It was in bad taste. All that remained when Kim arrived, was a wide, flattened stretch of dirt, speckled in lighter shades where the endless sand of the desert had mixed in.

Jimmy didn’t look up when Kim and Howard stopped walking, right where the street blossomed into a round dead end. He sat on the curb in front of the empty lot, arms loosely hugging around his knees. A beat up old duffel bag sagged to the side on the street next to him. He didn’t look sad or drunk or out of his head. He just looked tired.

Something inside Kim released, a long series of knots being pulled loose from her forehead down to the pit of her stomach. There was more air in her lungs, in the space around her. Until that moment, part of her hadn’t been able to refute Howard’s worries, his worst case scenario.

The man in question melted in relief at the sight of Jimmy. “Oh thank _God_ ,” he said, grabbing onto Kim’s cast for support.

“Ouch!” She shook him off. He lurched forward, striding into the cul-de-sac with the familiar swagger she hadn’t seen all day, hadn’t seen since the funeral. Like a flipped switch, he’d turned to anger.

“You have some nerve pulling a stunt like this, asshole!” He shouted, making the space between him and Jimmy disappear in quick, long strides. “We thought you were dead!”

“Howard,” Kim said, though she knew she was too quiet to be heard across the street. Her feet felt fused to the pavement.

“Always with the dramatics! My God, did your parents never hug the two of you?”  He loomed over Jimmy, who still didn’t make any acknowledgement that he noticed him. “What do you have to say for yourself?” He grabbed Jimmy’s arm and tried to yank him into standing. Jimmy went dead weight, refusing to budge. “ _Look at me_!”

“Howard!” Kim was louder this time, echoing off the walls of the houses still standing. He flinched and let go of Jimmy. Kim exhaled forcefully and pushed her hair back out of her face. “Go get the car.”

Jimmy finally moved, looking up at Howard with steely eyes. Howard moved backwards, one tiny step at a time. Kim met him at the center of the circle, and pressed his keys into his hands.

“This is not over,” he said. He didn’t make eye contact with either of them, staring instead at sun just beginning to fade, just above Chuck’s lawn.

Kim nodded, and walked past him. She sat down on the curb next to Jimmy, watching as he slowly turned away, back down the street. When Howard was out of earshot, becoming smaller and smaller in her vision, she finally spoke.

“Hey there.”

Jimmy smiled, thin-lipped and flat. “Hi.”

“What’s going on?” Like he’d walked in from the other room, grabbing a beer after he got home from work.

A warm breeze came through, ruffling Jimmy’s hair. “Do you know what The Blarney Stone is?”

Kim’s knots started tying themselves back together. “I’m not in the mood for more cryptic–”

“It’s this Irish superstition thing. Big hunk of limestone on some mountain in Cork. They say anyone who kisses it gets “the gift of gab”, because a hundred years ago some doofus lawyer did that right before he went to court, and then the guy talked his ass off and won the case.”

The story stirred some vague recollection in Kim’s mind. “So you’re running away to Ireland?”

“Yup. Gonna connect to my proud ethnic heritage of alcohol abuse and magically induced bullshitting.” He propped his elbow up on his leg. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

 _You didn’t_ , Kim almost lied. Instead she rested her head against his shoulder, breathing in the smell of his skin. “So. The Blarney Stone.”

“Chuck went to law school really young, like, 18, so he was still living at home, and my mom would always joke we had to take a trip to go kiss the stone, bring him _the gift of gab_ for his future career.” He licked his lips, a dull sort of light flickering behind his eyes at the memory. “She’d say, ‘unless we can get Jimmy to give up some of his’. He used to get so mad when she said that. I hadn’t thought about it in years, and then yesterday I was finishing up work–”

“Selling burner phones on the street, you mean,” Kim said, and felt Jimmy’s shoulder muscles tense against the side of her head.

“Yes,” he admitted, after a minute. “I was loading everything back into my car, and I had the radio on in the front, and there was this news story about how a couple days ago, a guy died trying to kiss the stone. You have to pull some crazy contortionist act to even reach the thing, lean over a ravine or something. They put all these bars around it in the 80s. It was the first time someone had died since. They said _you really had to try_ in order to fall.” He reached over and clapped a hand on Kim’s knee. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’ll scab,” she said.

“I just kept thinking about that, the whole ride home. About how much people have to _try_ to die. All Chuck did, his whole life, was _try._ The hard way was the right way, always and forever. Even in destroying our entire life, in burning himself to the ground, he worked so damn hard. He really tried to fall.”

Kim looked down at the canvass bag, which folded in concave in places. She could picture Jimmy stuffing clothes at random into it in the dark, keeping all the lights in Kim’s condo off, so she wouldn’t wake up. Slipping out in the night, putting the car into neutral and rolling it out of the parking lot before letting the Esteem’s ancient, growling engine come to life. “I just couldn’t get to sleep, the longer I lay there thinking about how I don’t have to work at all to fail, it just happens. I am _effortless_ in my ability to fuck up.”

Kim didn't try to refute this. He wouldn't hear it anyway. “How long did you drive?”

“‘til I ran out of gas. I thought about going up to Cicero but I got nobody left for me there, and if someone with my record goes south of the border I might not be able to get back in. And then I thought about how if I left at all, I might not ever come back.”

Kim lifted her head off his shoulder. “Good to know.”

Jimmy cringed. “No, that’s _– I_ don’t feel right here. I don’t fit. Don’t try to pretend you haven’t noticed that. Chuck, Howard, they all knew. Sometimes transplants take–” he knocked his leg against hers, “–and some of us just get rejected in a spectacular fashion.”

 _It takes work to make a home, you asshole._ Kim thought. _You’re not afraid of work. You’re Jimmy. If you give up, that is the most terrifying thing you’ve done all day._

Jimmy glanced over his shoulder, staring at the earth. Chuck was happy here, for a long time. He was happy here too.

“Are you hungry?” She asked.

He sighed, turned back around. Looked down at the cracked street between his legs. “Stop trying to make this okay. I told you, there’s nothing to fix. I just can’t be here, anymore.”

Howard’s car began to rumble down the street towards them. Kim stood up and offered her hand. “Okay, Jimmy can’t be here. How about Viktor?”

Jimmy stilled, taken aback. Howard pulled his Lexus in a graceful loop around the street, stopping just a few feet away. The heat from the bottom of the car blasted out against their ankles. “That guy’s most at home in a hotel bar.”

“So, dinner?” Kim tried again. "A few drinks, check out some easy marks?"

Jimmy smirked a little, still looking at the ground. “Only if Giselle’s going to be there.”

“She’s usually free,” Kim said lightly.

There would be time later, to fight. To lie awake in bed for hours, listening to Jimmy breathe, checking for any sign he was faking, about to get up and leave again. To try for the twentieth time to make him talk, to her, to Howard’s mythical Dr. Shapiro, to the slab of stone that used to be his family.  Kim had so much time to bite her tongue and hold him as tightly as she could, knowing it to be an illusion, that he could slip out of her arms anytime he wanted, if he tried harder than this the next time. Knowing that playing Giselle and Viktor would only hold off Next Time, not stop it forever.

For now, though, Jimmy took her hand, allowed himself to be led into the backseat of the car as Howard began his rant anew, and that was enough.

It had to be.


End file.
